Parker Week 33 – Swimming Adventures
August 24, 2009
Parker at the beach
Here is my upfront warning, this post is about poop. All about poop and pretty much nothing else. If you don’t want to read about baby poop misadventures, check out some other posts, but you’ll probably want to skip this one.
Last week was incredibly hot and unbearably humid. We have a pretty full schedule after work with baths, dinner, and bedtime routines, but last week we blew all of those off to swim. It’s August, and the hot weather won’t last forever, and our kids are only little once, so we decided it was more important to swim than to grocery shop or cook dinner.
On Monday night I couldn’t wait to get into the water. We got home after work, and threw on our swim suits. Xander wears a suit that has a life preserver built into the shirt. Parker is still in little swimmers and swim trunks. After we were all dressed, I threw some towels into a tote bag and we were out the door. We drove to the next town over where the town beach is open and free after 5pm. We pulled into the dirt driveway and got Xander out of his seat. As soon as I picked Parker up, I could smell that he needed a diaper change, stat.
I turned to Zach and told him that Parker had pooped, but we only had 1 wipe in the car… I think we both had a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look on our faces at that point. I had never been so glad that Xander spilled an entire cup of juice in the car before – because we had forgotten a roll of paper towels in the back seat.
So while Xander is practically bouncing out of his skin with excitement about swimming, I set a fussy Parker down in the back of our SUV to attempt to change his diaper. As I pull of his swim trunks, I discover that his little swimmer indeed isn’t designed for the massive amount of poo that he has produced. How so I discover this? That’s right folks, by diving in and getting a hand full of poo. By now, Parker is completely unimpressed with me. He starts to wiggle and complain, and in the process, tosses is pacifier into a pile of poo. Great, now we can’t even attempt to soothe him with a pacifier…
I finally get the poop-filled swim trunks off, and then go to work on the little swimmer. If you’ve ever used a little swimmer, you’ll recall that they don’t come on and off like regular diapers. They are built more like underwear – meant to slide up and down. I don’t know who designed these diapers, but they clearly have never tried to pull a soggy diaper of wet, wiggly baby legs before. Of course, in the process of pulling this poorly designed diaper off, I dropped a large pile of poo onto the diaper changing pad.
By this time, we are rapidly running out of paper towels. Xander has be-bopped all over the parking lot, and I think it’s a miracle that no one has run him over yet. Parker is red-faced and screaming at the top of his lungs. He and I are covered in poop, and Zach is trying to manage the growing mound of poop filled paper towels, and clothing. We are looking like awesome parents right now.
I finally get a majority of the poo contained, and break out my one wipe for a little detail work. We eventually get another little swimmer onto the poor kid, and all four of us trudge to the beach and then promptly into the water.
If you haven’t met me before, then you wouldn’t know that I am usually the over-prepared one. I’m the one with 3 changes of clothes for everyone, 6 extra diapers and an entire container of wipes. I’m known to pack 2 or 3 bags if we’re going to be gone for a whole day. I’m never without supplies. I think the heat must have gotten to me, but I most definitely learned my lesson – we will never travel without a diaper bag again…
If you’ve read my blog much lately, you’ll already know that we have been working hard to get Xander potty trained this summer. He moves up to the next room at day care at the end of the summer, and the goal is to be fully potty trained before he can move. As with every other milestone in Xander’s life, once he decided he was ready, he was completely ready and had no interest in going backwards (the same with walking, moving out of his high chair, sleeping in a big-boy bed, etc.) We didn’t expect potty training to be any different, and it wasn’t. While Xander was still learning the process, we used pull-ups at nap time and bed time. It wasn’t long before Xander decided he didn’t like the bulky feeling of the pull-ups, and refused to wear them at night. I was of course a little nervous at first, but resigned myself to washing extra bedding during the learning process. It turns out, I didn’t need to – Xander stayed dry that whole night, and every night since then. He’s stopped using pull-ups at day care as well! We are finally back to having only one kid in diapers. There are a few mornings when Xander has woken up exceptionally early needing to pee, and a few nights when he tries to prolong bedtime by asking to use the bathroom again (and again and again), but I think we’re about ready to call this potty-training project a success!
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